Nonureva
Really Surprised!
GurlyIamBeach
Instant Favorite.
Lidia Draper
Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
Richie-67-485852
This movie has flaws but little did they know that if they just showed the one dinosaur in this movie a little more instead of at the end, it would have gone down as a classic. Apparently this Dino had a poor agent. His part should have been larger and he would have found steady work in sequels is my guess. I mean who doesn't like seeing Dinos go nuts and eat things? I did like the nostalgia of the film as it captured ranch scenery and a type of life style sort of laid back for its time. Also, where there is one leftover beast from bygone days there has to be others plus plants or insects etc. One hold-out defies biological sense. We learn this from the original King Kong move. There had to be more than one Kong or how else could they hold the island for so long? Same here. There would have to have been a whole world slowly dying out at least but just one measly dino for the whole flick? That's why it gets a four. It is a must see just to say you have seen it. I usually recommend a snack or meal with movies plus a tasty drink. However on this, I had the remote in my hand speeding it up here and there. If you want to see what it was like to try to make a a dino movie way back then with little or no funds and still come out plus satisfy your inner creature feature urges....this films for you
Scott LeBrun
"The Beast of Hollow Mountain" would likely have more appeal for any viewer who first saw it at a young and impressionable age. If you're seeing it for the first time as an adult, like this viewer, you may well still find it to be fairly charming, an interesting combination of the monster movie and Western genres. The beast of the title, a dinosaur, doesn't show up until 3/4 of the way into the movie, and until then we get a likable enough human drama with a touch of mystery and mysticism: just WHO, or WHAT, is responsible for the disappearances of cattle in Mexico?One of those eager to find out is American rancher Jimmy Ryan (amiable Guy Madison, often to be seen with a smile on his face). In the meantime, Jimmy finds employment for local drunk Pancho (Pascual Garcia Pena) and loves the sweet Sarita (lovely Patricia Medina), although she's agreed to marry another man, Enrique Rios (Eduardo Noriega), a rival of Jimmy's in more way than one, and a constant thorn in his side.Co-director Edward Nassour does the decent stop motion animation in this reasonably entertaining little diversion; the concept originated with the legendary stop motion specialist Willis O'Brien of "King Kong" fame. The colourful CinemaScope photography is quite gorgeous, giving us an eyeful of all of the flavour of the Mexican locations; there's a lot to take in. The script by Robert Hill is dialogue heavy so less patient viewers may fidget a little while waiting for the dinosaur to show up. But things do get pretty exciting once it does.Madison and Medina are highly engaging leads, and the supporting cast features some fine performers. Julio Villarreal has a solid presence as friendly old Don Pedro, but Noriega captures the lions' share of the attention playing a man who turns out to be a real piece of work. The audience will be primed and ready to see this human antagonist get his comeuppance.This Mexican-American production is fun stuff - nothing great, but very easy to take while it lasts and it doesn't overstay its welcome at a running time of 80 minutes.Seven out of 10.
Michael_Elliott
Beast of Hollow Mountain, The (1956)** (out of 4)Low-budget film has a cowboy (Guy Madison) wondering what's happening to his cattle, which are either missing or turning up slaughtered. At first he thinks it's a rival but soon everyone learns that it's actually a prehistoric dinosaur that has been hiding up in a mountain behind a dangerous swamp. This is a precursor to THE VALLEY OF GWANGI and there's no question that the later movie is much more rewarding and there's also very little doubt that the biggest problem with this thing is the lack of money. The film runs 80-minutes and the first sixty-minutes are pure Western stuff but the material makes it something less than what you'd expect to see in a "C" grade film. The basic plot has our cowboy, an American, coming to Mexico to raise his cattle and for the next sixty-minutes we have to hear him talk to various people about why he isn't wanted. There's also a typical subplot involving a Mexican drunk who wants just one more shot to prove himself to his young son and it doesn't take much of an imagination to guess what happens next. There's also a love interest between the cowboy and Patricia Medina but it's not believable or remotely interesting. When people come to this movie it's going to be for the dinosaur effects by a Willis O'Brien protégé. Just looking at how fake the dinosaur is makes you know they didn't have much money to work with. The creature looks very fake when it walks and even worse is what it has other things on or in it. One example is a scene where it's walking around with a cow in its mouth and the effect is really bad. Even worse is one where the dinosaur has a man in its hand. The performances aren't that bad but that's not the reason you come to a movie like this. This certainly isn't a horrible movie but at the same time there's just not enough in it to make it worth sitting through.
lemon_magic
Cowboys being the archetypal movie hero for many previous movie generations, it's surprising that no one even seemed to try to combine a "real" Western with a monster movie and done it "straight" before this. And no, I'm not counting tripe such as "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter" - gimmicky novelty movies wearing Western trappings." "Beast" plays fair with the audience of its day - it is a Western through and through and really is built around all the standard Western trappings of its time. And when the monster comes out to play in the final 20 minutes, it's a genuine surprise and gives the movie a badly needed jolt of energy.It's just too bad that the use of Western screenplay staples is so clichéd - except for the actual monster plot elements ("who is stealing or eating the cattle?"), nothing that any character says or does will surprise you in any way. And someone needed to throttle the soundtrack guy down a bit - it's simultaneously overbearing and overdone.And the special effects aren't all that great, although I can respect the amount of back breaking work that must have gone into using "replacement" animation for some of the dinosaur sequences(as opposed to the more well known stop motion techniques mastered by Harryhausen.) "Replacement animation" involves creating a new wax figure for each and every frame of the stop motion sequences (as opposed to just changing limb placement, expressions etc on several models) and it must have made such demands on the production budget that they could only use a very limited amount...and it still doesn't look very good to eyes accustomed to Harryhausen.A devoted fan of the Western genre (and Mexican movies) will probably like this movie more than I did...but I give it credit for trying something interesting and playing it straight instead for exploitation value. (All the exploitation is in the title, nowhere else in the film).